Considering Habituated Play in the Musical Ecologies of Video Games

This article considers implications on musical perception in video games when players have adapted to the game—a stage of play at which video games can be reasonably considered musical ecologies. I first describe the phenomenon of what I call “habituated play,” when players have played a game for so long that their actions within it are relatively unconscious. At this stage of play, I argue, music perception is fundamentally different from first encounter, and ultimately becomes part of the game as an inhabited ecology. Focusing on Bejeweled 3, one of many potential examples of addictive match-3 games, I use habituated play as means to understand how video games transform musical meaning.